Herb Mignery

b. 1937

It is not uncommon that artists who grew up on ranches focus their career on recreating the old West in their work. Something about the genuineness of life lived close to the soil seems to impart to the nascent artist an understanding of the West and those who tamed it. Such an understanding is certainly true of Herb Mignery. He grew up on a Nebraska ranch, where his family had lived over a hundred years. He was a real, working cowboy. One can see these roots in Mignery's work.

Mignery's path to artistic fame is remarkably like that of his great forebear, Charles Russell. As a cowhand, Mignery fell to drawing as naturally as he did to speaking. He eventually left the Nebraska ranch and joined the military, where his superiors recognized his talent as a draftsman and employed him as an illustrator. The experience was definitive for him. In 1963, when Mignery left the military, the world of commercial art seemed natural. However, he eventually moved from commercial art to the life of an artist in the fullest sense of the term.

Mignery has worked in almost every artistic medium in the course of his career. In 1973, however, he first experimented with the medium of bronze, a medium which he made his own. His horses and riders, their gear and tackle, their motion and focus have become a trademark known by an admiring public and by fellow artists alike.

Mignery has been recognized by members of his profession for 25 years. He was inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America in 1984. He became a member of the National Sculpture Society in 1996, in 2001 was elected a Fellow, and the following year he joined the Society's Board of Directors.